To: feedback@hulu.com
Subject: Imagine there’s no countries

Dear Hulu,

After you ignored my first email, I will give it one more try, before I’ll go ahead and post this message on my blog.

In my first note I tried to point out the futility of putting shackles on a service that is hosted on the Internet, which by definition is not locality-based, but independent of countries and regions. The only binding element of the Internet is the technology it runs on and the people who are using it. Of course humans are bound locally, but the Internet frees them of this barrier, a boundary many acknowledge as the last frontier of free communication.

The nature of the Internet is communication, not restriction thereof. If you don’t get this simple principle, then I, and with me millions of Internet users, simply don’t get you. Let me have a look at your business idea: you want to bring your TV content to all people, for free, and I assume with this you want to envigorate your hosting TV brands, Fox and NBC. You allow everyone on earth to become a member, but you won’t let everbody watch the shows. You are excluding everyone who is located outside the US. A couple of weeks ago I was in Austin, Texas, while I was attending SXSW. I had no problem accessing your content from there. But because I’m in a different region now, my rights to get your content have been crippled and I find myself demoted to second class customer.

You couldn’t know I have a blog, but you should have assumed it. These days, everbody with access to the Internet is somehow, somewhere conntected with other people on the Internet. Everyone who consumes online is also publishing online, even if it’s only micro content. The Internet just enables the nature of ourselves, to communicate freely. And the longer this thing we are calling the Internet goes, the more it becomes apparent, that this is just the beginning of something different than anything you know from TV. Consumers are not consumers anymore, they want to be treated like people. And they treat brands like people too, so you should be careful with your actions. If you want to be my friend, you need to behave. You need to be loyal, honest and true. Betray my trust and I don’t buy your brand any longer.

Communities are not built, they grow by themselves. You should know this most basic principle of all communities. You might have a growing fellowship of users in the US, but by overruling one of the most fundamental ideas of how communities online work, you not only ignore those other users worldwide; you shut them off, you close them out, you actively dismiss them.

In your mission statement, you wrote:

“Hulu’s ambitious and never-ending mission is to help you find and enjoy the world’s premium content when, where and how you want it.”

Did I read “when, where and how you want it”?

Let’s have a look at what this means for your brand. A minor effect? Seriously? Do you honestly believe Europeans keep their thoughts for themselves? Do you think they have a different Internet, restricted to the European Community? Like a French, a German and a Dutch Internet? In what kind of world are you living? If you are offering a service that is accessible worldwide, with the very idea of providing content everywhere, but then you are refusing to enabling us to consume this content, you are basically telling us we’re not worth it. You are hurting your brand. You make people angry. And you don’t need a marketing guru (not even an old-school push-marketing guru) to tell you that this is bad, very bad. Angry customers telling other customers about a miserable brand experience is a pure nightmare for any brand. It has the power to let stocks tumble and fall. It has the potential to bring you down.

I am not really sure if you know what you are doing. It seems to me your actions resemble the same arrogance and paralysis like a government most famous for its failures. Of course you can treat climate change like a local problem too. I’m sure at US command, clouds, winds and storms make a full stop at your country borders. Maybe you should look at the Katrina files in this regard.

Back to your actual problem, blowing off potential customers with an unfulfilled promise. A commending review in Fortune magazine won’t cure your problem.

Let me quote one of your statements in this Fortune article:

“‘They said big media was too stupid to do anything appropriate on the Web, and that NBC and Fox were incapable of partnering. Both charges have been wrong from day one.’ Whether or not that’s true, the world will soon judge for itself.”

I couldn’t find a better conclusion than Fortune authors David Kirkpatrick and Adam Lashinsky. (To get that, you first need to grasp that the world is not flat.)

I really recommend you go back to your drawing boards and reconsider different options. I don’t need to lay them out to you, but here’s a hint: Make your stuff accessible to everyone, or no one at all. Stop playing China or Cuba, by attempting to control the Internet and applying artificial barriers. A polite information that the content is not available in “my country” will not cut it. It will provoke more blog posts like this one.

With Best Regards,
Henning von Vogelsang